Ask HN: I am giving my first talk to 200 people at my job. Any tips?

I wrote a framework that has gotten very popular at my company. I have only ever given a 15-20 min talk on it in the past to groups of 20, 30 people. My next talk has >170 online viewers registers and 150+ in person. Any tips / advice?

Buy the book Presentation Zen and read it. Build your slideshow based on advice in that book. Practice your talk, with a timer, both alone and with a friendly audience (my dogs will sometimes listen for upwards of five minutes if they think they'll get a treat).

You're never perceived as being as nervous as you feel.

Pace yourself. Speak slowly and clearly.

I say be sure to dry run your entire presentation and to time it. You will figure out any nuances and time issues with your presentation.

Look people in the eye. Except, don't look them really in the eye because it'll make you nervous, just look right above their eyes at the hair. From a distance they won't notice.

Make yourself sympathetic (well, that's how I do it, not necessary your thing). After you told them who you are and what your function is, tell very quickly in 10 seconds what you like, some hobbies, where you live, show them a funny picture of your cat/dog.

I like to do things out of the ordinary, it catches their attention.

Engage your audience: Ask questions. DO a little quiz. Here's some examples of what I do in our standard presentation:

I have a slide of a biometric device the competition uses. Next I show different ways people use it, 3 photo's next to eachother, 1 right, 2 wrong. Then I ask the audience who thinks photo 1 is right, who thinks photo 2 is right,... There's always lots of confusion.

Next, I show the biometric device we use and ask them if they can think of a way not to use ours the right way. There isn't.

Another example: When I have told how what our operations does and give them some figures, I ask them 'who thinks we are more than 50 people, raise your hand please'... 'who thinks less than 50'... 'less than 20'.... etc. We're less than 10 and about 40% thinks we're more than 50 so that drops a little bomb.